from Discover Magazine
When Neal Evenhuis, entomologist at the Bishop Museum in Hawaii, identified a new species of bee fly from the American Southwest aascribed to the genus Phthiria, he couldn't resist having a little fun. In deciding on a species, he recalls, "I thought, well, what could I do that would go with Phthiria - I'm thinking Gravitae? But then I thought of Relativitae, because I could do a Latin etomology for it: 'relating to life'. So I got Phthiria relativitae out of that."
The next challenge was to find a journal willing to publish the name, making it an official part of the taxonomic record. "When you do something like that," Evenhuis says, "sometimes reviewers or editors may not have a sense of humor."
So Evenhuis decided to send Phthiria relativitae overseas, where the English-language joke would fly (no pun intended!) under the radar. "I submitted it to a Polish journal and they published it, no questions asked," he says.
HINT: For anyone not up to snuff on their Latin, the pronunciation is "Theory a'Relativity".
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